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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Justice Dept. Approves XM Merger With Sirius - New York Times

Whatever happened to ____? You know those stories that just seem to drag on and on and on....this may take the cake. The XM Sirius Merger is once again back in the news for the third straight semester!

"The Justice Department gave approval...to the merger of two rival radio networks, XM and Sirius, a marriage that would create a de facto monopoly in satellite services now used by more than 17 million subscribers....The Justice Department’s antitrust division announced...it approved the merger after determining that prices were not likely to rise, in part because of competition from other program sources, like high-definition radio as well as iPods and other MP3 players that can be connected to home or car audio systems."

But lest you think you have heard the end of it, this still has to be approved by the Federal Communications and it seems like it is still far from a done deal:

"F.C.C. officials have offered conflicting signs on whether the commission would approve the merger.

The commission’s chairman, Kevin J. Martin, was quoted last week as saying that “I haven’t figured out what I think we should do on it yet.”"

This serves as a good reminder why horizontal deals can be difficult to get approved. This deal was first announced back in February of 2007.